'Curve' swings and misses

Eastwood plays Gus, a longtime baseball scout for the Atlanta Braves who's starting to...well...get old. He's losing his vision but doesn't want to tell anyone so he can continue his job watching games and evaluating players. But Gus' longtime friend and boss Pete (John Goodman) can tell that Gus is slipping.

So Pete enlists the help of Gus's daughter Mickey (named after Mickey Mantle, and played by Adams). She's an attorney at a big law firm in Atlanta who's close to becoming a partner in the firm. Mickey decides to take time-off and join Gus on the road to help him scout a high school star who the Braves are thinking of drafting. However there's a problem: Gus and Mickey aren't exactly close, since he abandoned her when she was a child after her mother/his wife died.

So far so good. But then "Trouble with the Curve" gets into trouble with the appearance of Johnny (Timberlake), a former major league pitcher who's now a scout for the Boston Red Sox. Johnny meets-up with Gus, who signed him when he was a prospect, and he's introduced to Mickey. Of course we all know where this is going.

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The film's strengths are its two leads. Eastwood and Adams are fantastic. Their scenes together are honest, dramatic and believable. However, the Mickey and Johnny storyline becomes a distraction, taking the film away from the father-daughter story, which should be the main focus. If first-time screenwriter Randy Brown had just stuck to the true, dramatic core of movie - the dynamic between Gus and Mickey - "Curve" would have been a much better movie.

Also, the baseball scenes lack the realism of last year's Oscar-nominated "Moneyball". The hot-shot high school star is made out to be a goofball (who only hits home runs) and Goodman's Head of Scouting doesn't have much depth. Matthew Lillard ("The Descendants") is good in a small role as a member of the scouting department who thinks Gus can no longer do his job.

There are plenty of corny scenes in "Trouble with the Curve", but also a few effective surprises. But this script needed a few more weeks in Spring Training before making its big league debut.

LCJ Rating: C

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Lights-Camera-Jackson will host an exclusive, one-night-only Capital Region screening of the award-winning independent film - "Fat Kid Rules the World" this Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. at The Madison Theater in Albany. Tickets are available at the Madison Theater box office.